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As the economy flirts with a double-dip recession and
cost-conscious companies hesitate to re-hire, the workplace for
many Americans has shifted away from crowded offices to a new
world of solitary work.

From freelancers to telecommuters to laid-off workers making do
with temporary jobs, an increasing number of Americans are
reporting to work each day from a corner of their home, a space
in the garage, a private office or even a table at the local
coffee shop.

For some, it's a dream come true. But the transition isn't smooth
for everyone.

"It's easier to get in the mood to work when everybody else
around you is working," says Maurice
Schweitzer, a Wharton
professor of operations and information management. Without an
office, "you have to create that entire structure yourself."

For solitary workers, re-creating the workplace goes beyond
buying a phone and a laptop. Lone workers must also take greater
responsibility for their own professional image, networking
opportunities, training and daily motivation, experts at Wharton
and elsewhere point out. If they don't, they risk missing out on
important social connections and possibly career growth.
Companies, too, should mind the gap. Despite the apparent cost
savings of offsite workers, remote connections could possibly
lead to miscommunication, and threaten productivity in the long
run.

It's unclear how many Americans work in isolation. According to
the New York-based Freelancers Union, independent workers make up
about 30% of the American workforce, although this figure does
not include telecommuters who are part of a company but work from
home. Also, many independent workers -- including freelancers,
part-time workers, consultants, independent contractors,
contingent workers, temps and the self-employed -- work on job
sites with other people.

Being physically apart from co-workers creates challenges both
internally and externally, Wharton experts note. One of the most
basic: Without a physical office, it can be difficult for some
workers to find a balance between work and play. The isolation
raises "the whole question of how you manage the boundaries
between work and the rest of your life," according to Wharton
management professor Stewart
Friedman, who studies how leaders integrate the four domains
of work, life, community and self. For those who are
independent-minded, working from home can be more productive than
working at the office because it frees them from distractions and
allows them to work as they please. For others, home life gets in
the way. "You have all sorts of other activities that might be a
distraction from the work. So how do you focus your attention on
the things that matter, when they matter? You need to have a
greater sense of discipline about creating those boundaries."

Some people require more boundaries than others, points out
Wharton management professor Nancy
Rothbard, who has studied how people blend or separate their
work and personal life. "People actually have different
preferences for how they manage these boundaries," she says.
"There are some people who like to blur the boundaries between
personal and professional -- people who prefer to integrate their
work and life domains.... Then there are people on the other end
of that spectrum who really strongly want to keep their work and
personal lives separate." For the latter group, working at home
would be "a disaster," Rothbard adds. "It's going to be very
distressing to them. It's going to be hard for them to manage."

A New Way to Define Your Career

Monica McGrath, a leadership consultant and adjunct management
professor at Wharton, recommends a dedicated space at home or a
shared office -- not the ubiquitous coffee
shop, which is filled with distractions. "If you shift to a
home-based business, it is quite easy to assume all you need is a
phone and a desk. What you actually need is a new way to
define your career," McGrath notes. Without the structure of the
office, solitary workers can succumb to "the distraction of the
laundry, the pets, the neighbors, friends looking for company,
boredom and other types of demands. While all these things can
distract your mind at work, the fact is, you can't really do the
laundry at work."

For independent contractors and freelancers, work-life boundaries
can blur not only in space but time. Since contractors paid by
the hour tend to become very focused on how they use each minute,
they sometimes end up working more, according to Wharton
management professor Matthew
Bidwell. "It becomes more salient to them if they're not
working," says Bidwell, who has done extensive research on
contract workers in the IT sector. "If they take off an afternoon
to do something fun, it is much easier for them to put a dollar
figure on how much that costs."

Money matters also lead to meaning-of-life questions for workers
who are on their own. Susan J. Ashford, a professor of management
and organizations at the Stephen
M. Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan,
believes that questions about purpose and meaning come up more
easily to workers who have no organization behind them. "Our
argument is that your ego is very invested in the work because
it's just you," she notes. "There's nobody there to tell you that
what you're doing is great even though profits are going down."

In a study recently presented at the Academy of Management,
Ashford conducted in-depth interviews with solitary workers about
how they stay motivated, and discovered that many needed to
create a larger narrative of meaning behind their work. For some,
such as a rug maker who likened her basement workshop to
Picasso's studio, the stories were strictly imaginary.
Others created ego-boosting surroundings, like the financial
analyst who set up his office to feel like the cockpit of a jet
plane. The narratives helped sustain motivation when money got
tight or stress levels rose. "When you are on your own,
meaning-making feels much more necessary to your work life than
when you're in an organization," Ashford says. "The more freedom
you have in your work, the more you have to do this."

Creating Virtual Face Time

Managing personal time, space and motivation is just the first
step: Lone workers also have to work to keep themselves on other
people's radars while battling the misperception that they are
not really working.

"There's a sense of illegitimacy about it," notes Debra Osnowitz,
a sociology professor at Clark University and author
of Freelancing Expertise -- Contract Professionals in
the New Economy. Offsite workers have to make extra
efforts to communicate that the job is getting done, Osnowitz
found from interviews with freelance writers, editors,
programmers and engineers. "Their being offsite and out of sight
means needing to be accountable and clear," she says. "You can't
depend on just being there to indicate that you're attentive to
what your client wants."

Wharton management professor Peter
Cappelli agrees. "In many organizations, if not most,
there's still a premium based on face time. The more we see you,
the more we think you're working or are valuable -- particularly
in jobs that don't have clear performance measures."

Indeed, a
study released this month by WorldatWork, a nonprofit association
that examines workplace issues, found that the number of people
who worked from home or a remote location for an entire day at
least once a month declined to 26.2 million in 2010, compared to
33.7 million in 2008. A higher rate of unemployment is believed
to play a role in those numbers, the association reports; but so
is anxiety over job security and the widespread belief that
visibility creates awareness of a worker's value to a particular
company. Although the total number of "teleworkers" decreased,
the percentage of people who worked remotely more than once per
month went up, from 72% in 2008 to 84% in 2010.

Distance can also create gaps in communication and training
opportunities, Cappelli notes. "You kind of lose out on the
office politics in terms of knowing what's going on. It's still
true that people who are liked get more opportunities." And
skills can diminish without easy access to training and new
projects. "You get hired as a contractor to do the work
essentially that you did before," Cappelli says, "so you could
become obsolete pretty quickly ... unless you do things to
[increase] your skills."

Lack of face time also makes it more difficult for offsite
workers to cultivate professional relationships that can grow a
career. "Face-to-face communication allows people to build trust
and communicate more completely than they would otherwise,"
according to Schweitzer. When it comes to building lasting work
relationships, the most important communication is that which
is not related to work -- the handshake, a pat
on the back, jokes and office chitchat that disappears when
workers are only remotely connected. "Non-task communication is
what goes missing with this distant work," Schweitzer says. "So
in the absence of non-task communication, we don't build that
relationship -- that rapport -- and ultimately we don't build
that trust."

Over time, lack of contact could shrink a lone worker's
professional network and the benefits that come with it, Friedman
points out. "You lose so much of the benefits of social
interaction ... the serendipitous contact with other people that
might lead you to resources and connections." With fewer chance
encounters in elevators, lunchrooms and daily meetings, it
becomes more difficult to build one's reputation, find mentors or
mentor others, or seize the chances to contribute to other
people's welfare and success. "It's more difficult to effect that
building of social capital," Friedman says. "If you're working in
social isolation, you have to make an extra effort to connect
with people."

Distance creates not only a potential problem for workers, but
also for the teams and clients they support. Without
face-to-face, in-person contact, important pieces of
communication can get lost. "Emotions are information ... and
emotions influence performance," notes Wharton management
professor Sigal
Barsade, who researches emotions, organizational culture and
team dynamics. More than half of communication about emotion is
transmitted through facial expression; about one-third comes from
tone, and less than 10% comes from what is actually said, she
points out. That means people who communicate primarily through
phone and emails are at a disadvantage because they aren't
getting complete information from each other.

The solution is not to stop telecommuting, but for management to
be "hyper-vigilant" about potential communication gaps and take
steps to prevent them or compensate, Barsade says. "If you can't
get the full information about people's emotions, ultimately that
will affect your performance, their performance and the
performance of the organization."